A Day In The Life Of A Graduate In Our CRO Team

By Nick Rhodes

9:15– Wide awake and still buzzing from the gym, I race the lift up to the fifth floor in time for a quick browse of news sites and RSS feeds before the day begins. In such a dynamic and rapidly evolving industry, we’re always on the lookout for new developments and innovations to keep us ahead of the competition. Normally I’d kick the day off with a bowl of cereal, but today I’m being treated to one of our breakfast training sessions…

9:30 – Breakfast training session. We run a few of these each month; there’s always something interesting to take away, as well as the bacon butties and Danish pastries provided. Today one of our sister agencies is demonstrating a new bespoke tracking tool – it allows you to track and interact with customers at different stages down the conversion funnel in real-time. Cutting edge and innovative technology – very cool!

10:30 – Back at my desk, I discover that one of our clients has made a request for a new page design on a site that we’re hosting for them. I liaise with our graphics designer for some advice, wireframes and mock-ups and set about coding the page.

12:00 – I manage to dedicate an hour to independent study. This year I’ve been studying for two professional qualifications – the Google Analytics IQ, and the IPA Foundation Certificate. Alongside these I’m constantly learning from online tutorials and on-the-job ad hoc training. I try to set aside time for this wherever possible as there’s so much to learn.

13:00 – Lunchtime. As well as our canteen, working next to Tottenham Court Road leaves plenty of choices: everything from Tesco to Nandos. There’s even table football in the office for when you’re in a gaming mood. Today I’m feeling particularly adventurous and manage to make it to Oxford Street and back in time for an afternoon bowl of cereal (student habits die hard).

14:00 – Another client request, this time for a different client. They need pageviews and conversion rates for the past 12 months of traffic to several different website localisations. The only problem is that several months worth of data are absent from Google Analytics for one localisation. I rack my brains trying to remember everything I’ve forgotten about interpolation… After a quick trip down memory lane for some maths and Excel wizardry I’ve managed to plug the gaps.

15:00 – Testing and optimization. A client has booked a homepage takeover from a major site and is expecting a high volume of traffic in the next couple of weeks. In order to ensure that this traffic leads to conversions I look back at analytics data for the past year, evaluating visitor interactions and looking for testing opportunities. I then use our testing software to turn these ideas into experiments, setting up multivariate split-testing on a number of different pages. Hopefully these will yield some promising results to really boost the conversion rate in time for the takeover.

17:00 – With half an hour remaining I go through my to-do list, double-checking and ensuring that all loose ends are tied up and all emails responded to. I’m not the most innately organised person, but both with diligence and a little bit of help from Outlook, Evernote and Excel I’m learning to better manage my time.

17:30 – A successful day at work. I accomplished a lot today and feel content as I pack up my laptop and prepare for the commute home. Perhaps I’ll reward myself with another bowl of cereal when I get back